Culture

The Crisis in Israel's Holocaust Education

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Israeli Minister of Education Shai Piron’s plan to introduce Holocaust education to Israeli public schools starting as early as the first grade has been controversial. Alongside the concern voiced by many parents about traumatizing young children with gruesome details of systematic ethnic cleansing, many begin to question how the continued rehashing of communal wounds shape the development of national identity and what political interests the perpetuation of historical trauma might serve.

Culture

The Challenges of Seder Night

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The challenge of Seder night is not just to remember the past, not just to recall the extraordinary longevity of our story with its roots in servitude and its mythos of the Jews as a people liberated into a different kind of servitude – servitude to a vision of how things could be, how freedoms of many kinds could be the inheritance of all peoples

Culture

Leaving Auschwitz

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Remembering the Holocaust as history is one thing; remembering it as a memorial to its victims and a tribute to the brave people who saved many from the Shoah is another, but brandishing it as a shield against criticism (Don’t talk to me about suffering), or as justification for the state of Israel is inappropriate. And to chastize the innocent—those who were not even born at the time of the Shoah—is wrong.

Culture

The Transformative Activist Training

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A transformation of consciousness throughout our society is the absolute prerequisite for making social, economic, and political transformation. We invite you to come to our Transformative Activist Training so that you may join our movement and become a transformative activist.

Culture

A Teacher's Rant: Why Flipping Classrooms is 'Flipping Ridiculous'

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“Flipped” Classrooms have students watching their teacher’s lectures at home and completing their homework at school. This may bring about a greater level of hands-on participation in the classroom, but what about those who get left behind? Not everyone has a supportive home atmosphere with the resources and ability to thrive in this new, technology-heavy platform.

Culture

United States to Germany: Why My Family Moved

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Donna Swarthout decided to take advantage of the German law that allows families persecuted by the Nazis to have their citizenship restored. In the wake of the government shutdown she feels that she has made the right choice, and finds relief in the German healthcare, educational, transportation, and political systems.

Christianity

Thou Shalt Not Employ a Transgender Professor? It’s Not a Verse in the Bible

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Reflecting on her own coming-out experience at Yeshiva University, Joy Ladin speaks out in support of Professor Adam Ackley, the theologian who was just fired from Christian Azusa Pacific University after coming out as transgender. There is no verse in the Bible in which God says, “Thou shalt not employ a transgender professor,” and religious organization who act against such people only do so out of fear: fear of difference, fear of the unknown, and fear of losing money.

Culture

Crying Out for What Our Courts Can’t Give

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I’m not sure we’ll ever know who was crying out on the recording when George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin. But I am certain that millions of mothers in this country are crying out for something that our current justice system cannot give: the assurance that their black and brown boys will not be suspect before we bother to learn their name or their story.